


flags of the old regime

by ronsparkyspeirs



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-16
Updated: 2015-07-16
Packaged: 2018-04-09 14:32:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4352525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ronsparkyspeirs/pseuds/ronsparkyspeirs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daryl grieves. The five stages, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	flags of the old regime

**Author's Note:**

> i started writing this way back in February, so the pain of losing Beth was still pretty fresh.

He’s a wreck and he knows it.

Withdrawn, with an empty look in his eyes, he’s regressed to a point in time where grunts and shrugs make up most of his vocabulary. It feels like there’s a hole in his chest, like a void took up home in his chest. It hurts when he breathes, it hurts when he’s outside and people want to interact with him, makes him want to fucking sob when he hears a mother calling for her daughter, _Bethany_ she’d shouted and he froze in his steps and it took Rick leading him by the arm away from the little girl with blue eyes.

An angry, dark place inside him tells him sometimes that Rick never really loved Lori. How could he, when he sees him laughing and smiling with that woman? She was his _wife_ , the mother of his _children_ , and sometimes Daryl thinks that Rick’s forgotten Lori’s name.

One night he’s up on the wall, with Michonne,  keeping guard and out of the corner of his eye he sees a blonde running toward the front gates. He climbs down the wall in record time and barely registers Michonne’s voice calling out to him, long blonde hair is all he saw, blonde, blonde, blonde. He grabs the woman by the arm and spins her around, she looks up at him with scared _brown_ eyes. Wrong color, everything’s wrong and Michonne quickly apologizes to the lady and drags him back to the wall.  

He thinks he might be losing it, he thinks the group knows. But no one says anything.

One night they’re all at Abraham and Rosita’s place, a nice family affair with a wild turkey dinner. The food is pretty good and after, Abraham brings out two bottles of wine he’d gotten on a run. Everyone’s relaxed and happy, talking and cracking jokes. Then he hears her singing, the voice is too similar, it’s almost the same but not really, her voice is a little lower and not as smooth but close enough.

“Shut the fuck up,” he snarls, making everyone look at him.

“Daryl, I--,” Maggie starts, shaking her head.

“Don’t ever fucking sing,” he tells her, and he can tell that she’s surprised at his tone, she probably didn’t even think of what she would trigger, “just shut the fuck up,” he says, none too gently.

“Daryl, calm down,” Glenn tries, laying a hand on his shoulder which Daryl only shrugs off.

“Don’t,” he growls, and by now people are either looking away or looking like they’re sorry for him, he doesn’t know which pisses him off the most.

“She’s gone,” Maggie says quietly, soothingly. Those words coming from her mouth make him snap, she didn’t even care to remember that she had a sister for the longest time, only asked him about it when Daryl brought it up. And yeah, he knows about the Terminus’ signs, directed at Glenn and Glenn only; truth is, she’d never thought about Beth because it was easier not to. Well fuck that, Daryl’s still here and he’s gonna remind everyone just how strong Beth was.

“Shut up!” he yells at Maggie, stands from his seat on the couch and feels the familiar heat that comes with anger, makes him see red, makes him stand up straight and start pointing fingers, get in everyone’s face it tells him. Make them **see**.

“All ya’ll thought she was dead long before we got to the hospital!,” he shouts, circling the living room like a big jungle cat, “no one fucking cared to ask me about her,” he says through gritted teeth.

“And you!” he says, pointing his index finger at Maggie, “you left with your boy to fucking Washington, didn’t even remember that you had a sister did you?”

Maggie purses her lips, he can tell that she wants to say something but there’s guilt in her eyes too. Glenn goes to stand next to Maggie, his posture defensive, like he thinks Daryl might hit her or something.

“I was the only one that looked for her,” the way he’s acting now makes him think of moonshine and pretty girls with sunshine in their smiles, “she always knew you all were alive, begged me to track ya’ll,” he spits at them and he hears a strangled noise come from Maggie’s throat.

“And what did ya’ll do for her? huh?” he looks at Carol, because she’d been the one that brought up how Beth saved her life, she meets his glare head on.

He spins around and looks at Rick, “Took care of your baby, back in the prison, you forget that already?”

“We all cared about Beth, we understand what you’re going through,” Carol speaks up, firmly but almost in a whisper.

They don’t, they don’t understand. Everyone acted like Beth was just another person, another casualty on their death count, left her back in Georgia, the blood wasn’t even dry from his hands before they were driving up to Richmond. They don’t know, they can’t understand.

“Nah! I’d still be with her if it hadn’t been for those walkers, She--” he trails off when he thinks of her face and how soft it looked in the candlelight, golden hair and hopeful eyes. He felt something for that woman, that girl who brought him back from the brink, he doesn’t know the words but he knows what he feels.

Rick looks at him with dawning realization, the rest of the group wearing similar expressions, Maggie’s hand is at her mouth, covering her shock. He stands up and leaves before anyone can say anything, he doesn’t feel like explaining so he slams the door shut behind him and goes back to his own place.

He’s losing it, and he knows it.

It ain’t fair, _it ain’t fucking fair_. He’d been happy for once in his miserable life, this woman who looked like something out of a dream had made him believe that there was still something out there for him, maybe something that included her. And she was gone, just like that, not even a fucking goodbye. He reckons if it hadn’t been for the walkers that interrupted their dinner he’d still be in that little house with her.

Safe and away from everyone. She could sing on the piano and he’d go out hunting every day and bring home all kinds of things for her, she would have been happy too. He lets himself imagine it, think of her small hands and how they felt in his, the weight of her head as she leaned on his shoulder. He thinks about those weeks spent with Beth and the sobs just creep up on him.

He’s practically sprinting when he runs into Aaron, concern twisting his face into something that’s too close to panic; he raises a hand and places it on Daryl’s shoulder, “Everything okay?” he asks, softly, gently, like he really cares about the answer.

Daryl looks down at his boots, tears blurring his vision, what can he say, what does he want to say? Aaron waits patiently and Daryl shakes his head, he feels like a child when Aaron starts leading him back up to his house. They enter the living room and Daryl doesn’t even care that his eyes are probably red or that he’s sniffling like a baby, Eric goes into the kitchen and Daryl can hear him turning on the stove.

“What happened? Did someone--?” Aaron asks, but Daryl cuts him off, he thinks someone just died.

“Nah,” he responds, clearing his throat, wiping the snot from his nose with the sleeve of his jacket.

“You can tell me, Daryl,” Aaron says, his voice so sincere and his eyes so understanding and Daryl really wants to, wants blurt everything out like word vomit but not when Aaron is looking at him like that, not when any second Eric will be back from the kitchen. So he stands, swallows the lump in his throat and paces the living room, picks up little things the guys have decorated the place with. He likes it here, likes the way they make him feel.

He pauses, chews on his lower lip and nods, “Her name was Beth,” he says.

  
  
                                


End file.
